The Plant Press

Art by Alice Tangerini: Schiedea waiahuluensis W.L.Wagner, Weller, B.Nyberg, & A.K.Sakai

From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 1, January 2025.

Schiedea waiahuluensis, a newly discovered species from Hawai‘i, is likely the first plant to be identified and collected using drone technology. The species is found only on the dry cliffs of Waiahulu on the island of Kauaʻi, with an estimated population of around 345 individuals, primarily growing on bare rock surfaces in small pockets of soil. Seeds from the first drone-collected samples were sent to the greenhouses of the University of California Irvine, where nursery-grown plants allowed for detailed measurements and material for the official type specimen. Alice Tangerini used the Holotype cuttings sent from UC Irvine for the inked illustration of the habit and inflorescence. Digital images taken from the cuttings and UC Irvine photos were used for the flower details to show the diversity of the flower types and were drawn digitally in Adobe Photoshop.

Untangling Trebouxia, a green algal lichen photobiont in southern Africa

From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 1, January 2025.

By Ian Medeiros.

A recent study in the American Journal of Botany (2024; https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16441) provides a first view of the southern African biodiversity of the green algal genus Trebouxia (Chlorophyta), the most common photosynthetic partner in lichens.

Trebouxia in a squash preparation of lichen thallus. Hale 78605 (US).

Southern Africa, particularly the Greater Cape Floristic Region, is a biodiversity hotspot for vascular plants and hosts a unique biota of lichen-forming fungi (mycobionts). However, the region’s lichen-forming algae (photobionts) had hardly been studied with molecular data or put into a global phylogenetic context. In the unicellular green alga Trebouxia, as with other lichen photobiont lineages, genomic variation far exceeds the limited morphological variation, and thus molecular data are essential for recognizing species.

To begin the process of applying a modern classification scheme to Trebouxia in South Africa and Namibia, an international team of scientists from the United States, Belgium, Chile, Hungary, Malaysia, Namibia, Panama, Poland, and South Africa sequenced the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and rbcL from ca. 150 lichen thalli representing diverse mycobionts and biomes, from desert and fynbos to Afrotemperate forest and montane grassland. These sequences were incorporated into curated, global datasets; putative species were delimited with both phylogeny and operational taxonomic unit (OTU) clustering approaches as a way of ensuring that conclusions were robust to uncertain species boundaries.

We found that the Trebouxia biota of this region contains an estimated 43 species, representing 20–30% of global Trebouxia biodiversity. This is comparable to other well-sampled regions of the Southern Hemisphere (i.e., Bolivia and Kenya). On one hand, the results exemplify an “everything is everywhere” approach to microbial biogeography, with a majority of the southern African Trebouxia species shared with Bolivia, Kenya, or the Mediterranean basin. Conversely, seven species were only found in southern Africa, although further sampling will be required to assess whether they are truly southern African endemics.

Sampling for lichen photobionts in the northern mistbelt forest of the Buffelskloof Nature Reserve, South Africa. (photo by József Geml)

Patterns in species distribution and the mycobiont–photobiont association echoed what has been found elsewhere in the world. For example, the foggy Namib desert coast was dominated by species of Trebouxia clade A, something also seen in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The mycobiont genus Parmotrema was strictly associated with species from Trebouxia clade C, as has been observed in the Neotropics and Northern Hemisphere. Mean annual precipitation, but not mean annual temperature or precipitation seasonality, was found to have a significant effect on the composition of Trebouxia communities.

Only five of the species-level lineages recognized in this study have been formally described, highlighting the substantial Linnean shortfall in Trebouxia, but also providing a blueprint for future efforts to recollect, culture, and formally describe these species.

Species discovery is propelled as scientists use drones to discover rare Hawaiian plants

From Plant Press, Vol. 28, No. 1, January 2025.

By Jon Letman, National Tropical Botanical Garden

Scientists in Hawai‘i have achieved what is believed to be the first new species discovery using aerial drone technology. Researchers from the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), Smithsonian Institution, Outreach Robotics, and Hawai‘i’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife discovered a previously unknown cliff-dwelling plant using drones and a robotic collecting arm on the island of Kaua‘i.

The flowers of a drone-collected specimen of Schiedea waiahuluensis. (photo by K.R. Wood)

The plant, Schiedea waiahuluensis, is a member of Caryophyllaceae, the carnation family, and one of 36 Schiedea species native to Hawai‘i, 12 of which are found only on Kaua‘i.

The discovery reveals new possibilities for plant conservation in extreme cliff habitat and also yielded the collection of a tiny native insect called a mirid bug which, if proven to be a new species, may also be the first collected by drone.

New taxa recently described by Smithsonian botanists

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 4, October 2024.

Over the past few months, Smithsonian botanists have discovered, described, and published 11 new plant species, a new plant genus, and established two new plant tribes. These taxa are found in South America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, and they represent unusual and unique additions to our understanding of the world’s flora. Some are threatened with extinction.

In Carvalho-Sobrinho et al. (2024), Laurence Dorr and colleagues describe a new Brazilian tree species, Eriotheca paganuccii (Bombacoideae, Malvaceae). This endangered species is endemic to montane wet forests near granitic-gneissic rock outcrops on summits of mountains in only three different locations in the Atlantic Forest of Bahia.

Eriotheca paganuccii was recently described as a new species by Jefferson Carvalho-Sobrinho, Aline da Mota, and Laurence Dorr. A) crown of E. paganuccii individuals in the canopy; B) detail of leaves at the top of the tree canopy; C) bark; D) leaves with less exposure to the sun; E) flower; F) seeds relative to a fruit valve and scanty kapok. (published in PhytoKeys)

Dorr also joins colleagues in describing a new species, Ouratea chepelii (Ochnaceae), from the Andean mountains of Venezuela (Niño et al. 2023). The new species is known only from the northern slope of Guaramacal National Park and the park's buffer zone at 1800-2000m.

Ken Wurdack and colleagues describe three new species of Plukenetia (Euphorbiaceae) from Madagascar (Gillespie et al., 2024). The three species, Plukenetia analameranensis, P. antilahimenae, and P. randrianaivoi, are unusual based on morphology, pollen, and molecular data. Based on their results, the authors suggest that the three new species along with P. ankaranensis form a subclade, sister to the other two Malagasy species, P. decidua and P. madagascariensis.

Weniomeles, a new genus in the rose family named in honor of Jun Wen

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

By Bin-Bin Liu and Richard G.J. Hodel.

A new genus, Weniomeles B.B.Liu, was recently described by former Botany fellow Bin-Bin Liu in honor of Smithsonian Botany Curator Jun Wen, in recognition of her substantial contributions to botany. The genus Weniomeles is in the apple tribe, Maleae, within the rose family, Rosaceae. Wen’s extensive dedication to research and promoting collaboration has significantly advanced the field of botany, particularly in fostering Sino-American scholarly exchange within the plant systematics community. The international scientific partnerships she has worked to establish have broadened our collective botanical knowledge. Her influence and mentorship have inspired many researchers, leaving a lasting legacy in the botanical sciences.

Morphological characteristics of Weniomeles (type species W. bodinieri) and comparison with its close relatives Stranvaesia and Photinia. I, Weniomeles bodinieri (photos by Bin-Jie Ge); (a-b) a complete and partial inflorescence; (c-d) top view of a single flower (unopen vs. open); (e) bottom view of young flower; (f) longitudinal-section of ovary; (g) stamens; (h) cross-section of ovary; (i) pistil; (j) flower dissection; (k-l) infructescence; (m) fruit; (n) cross-section of fruit. II, thorns on the stems of Weniomeles bodinieri (photo by Bin-Bin Liu). III, Stranvaesia lasiogyna (photo by Long-Yuan Wang). IV, Photinia serratifolia (photo by Xin-Xin Zhu).

This new genus was recently described in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2023.107914), in a collaborative paper by Ze-Tao Jin and Jun Wu of Nanjing Agricultural University, Richard G.J. Hodel of the Smithsonian Institution (Botany Department and Data Science Lab), Bin-Bin Liu, Dai-Kun Ma, and Chao Xu from the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hui Wang and Shui-Hu Jin from Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Guang-Ning Liu from China National Botanical Garden, Chen Ren from South China National Botanical Garden, Bin-Jie Ge from Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, and Qiang Fan from Sun Yat-sen University.

The new genus Weniomeles occupies a range from central and southern China to northern Vietnam and Indonesia. It is distinguished from other genera of the apple tribe by its purple-black fruits, thorny tree trunk and branches, and a distinctive fruit core anatomy characterized by multilocules separated by a layer of sclereids and a cluster of sclereids at the top of the locules.

A botanical detective story: uncovering the true type locality of a rare grass species

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

By Robert J. Soreng.

In 1992 I examined and annotated the holotype at Kew (K) of Poa moabitica Bor (published in 1972). Labelled as, “Plants of the Holy Land Collected by W. A. Hayne,” the specimen was collected in 1872. As far as botanist Norman Bor knew, or I could discover, no one had collected this grass species since. Bor guessed the plant was collected in Jordan on the Moab Plateau because Hayne had published a general paper in 1872 “On The Flora of Moab”. The type specimen was unusual, mesophitic looking, tall, closed-sheathed, densely hairy-liguled, broad-leaved, large-panicled and small-spikeleted, floret callus hairs scant (easily missed) or absent, perennial. Back then I was not sure if it was a Poa or perhaps a Glyceria or something new until I saw the dorsal tuft of callus hairs, a trait known only from Poa.

Poa moabitica Bor, holotype K000789577, “Plants of the Holy Land COLLECTED BY W. A. HAYNE”, with “Adonis” crossed out.

My chance encounter in 2023 with two newer Henri A. Pabot specimens of P. moabitica, donated to the general herbarium at G (Geneva) in 1972, mistakenly determined as and filed under Poa chaixii Vill., lead to an extended investigation, combing through the old floristic literature of the Levant region (an historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of West Asia), through many website searches (many dead ends), and language translations from French to Arabic and some back to English, and to contacts with multiple herbaria curators to track down where the original Hayne and newer Pabot specimens were actually collected, and where else Hayne’s collections might be housed.

The story of the original collection place revolved around Hayne’s fine set of Plants of the Holy Land, but there was little known about William Amherst Hayne other than he survived less than a year after returning to Oxford from his seminal foray to the Moab Plateau. In 1873 Kew received a full set of Hayne’s Plants of the Holy Land specimens but no itinerary has been reconstructed nor inventory of taxa or collections has been found. Unfortunately, most of the K labels of this set seen online have little or very sketchy provinces or dates. All this sleuthing shed a little more light on the short life of Hayne (1847-1873), that his collecting expedition extended northward to Lebanon and to Damascus, Syria, and that there is also a good set of duplicates at Oxford (OXF) with original labels, including places and dates.

This research led me to conclude that P. moabitica occurs only in wet habitats in forests of Lebanon and Syria, and not in Jordan as Bor assumed. As a result of my research, Harvard Index to Botanists has now been updated for Hayne and Pabot entries, and Plants of the World Online and Euro + Med PlantBase have corrected the ranges of both P. chaixii and P. moabitica.

Further detail about this research appears in my article, “Reassessment of Poa moabitica (Poaceae: Pooideae), mistaken identity of P. chaixii, and notes on Hayne’s Plants of the Holy Land,” (Kew Bulletin; http://doi.org/10.1007/S12225-024-10165-9). Poa moabitica belongs to P. sect. Homalopoa Dumort., is morphologically most similar to P. asiae-minoris H. Scholz & Byfield, of NW Anatolian Turkey, and allied to P. chaixii, P. hybrida Gaudin, and P. remota Forselles, which are mostly confined to Europe. The latter four are known to be diploids in the large (ca 580 spp.), predominantly polyploid genus. The paper also provides a good introduction to floras of the Levant Region.

Vickianthus, a new genus of the Vernonieae (Compositae), chosen to honor Vicki Funk

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 4, October 2023.

Herbarium sheet showing Vernonia alamanii DC. (Mexico, Valle de Cenancingo, Lyonnet 552, January 1931) designated as the type species Vickianthus alamanii (DC.) H. Rob. for the new genus Vickianthus H. Rob.

The sunflower family (Compositae) has the largest number of accepted species of any plant family, estimated to be between 25,000 to 30,000 in ca. 1,700 genera. Because of the size of the family and its complexity of flower structures, Compositae is divided into 45 tribes to reflect evolutionary relationships and shared characteristics. Harold Robinson and Sterling Keeley worked on one of the larger tribes in this family, Vernonieae. Morphologically diverse and globally distributed, this tribe comprises over 1,500 species with extensive distributions in both the Old and New Worlds. Coined as the “evil tribe” by Vicki Funk, this tribe has a continuum of overlapping morphological characters/states which makes it very difficult to resolve many of its systematic relationships.

Morphological work by Robinson and phylogenomic studies of Keeley in the past 40 years are only now beginning to tease apart this complicated “evil tribe” and provide a better understanding of the underlying morphological relationships within. With strong support from a recent molecular phylogenetic study of the Vernonieae across its entire geographical range by Keeley and the work by Robinson, ten Mexican species of Vernonia and Vernonanthura were transferred to the new genus, Vickianthus in the newly released paper, “Vickianthus, a new genus of the Vernonieae (Compositae) from Mexico” by Harold Robinson†, Vicki A. Funk†, Carol L. Kelloff, and Raymund Chan, and is published in Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (https://doi.org/10.17348/jbrit.v17.i1.1291).

As Robinson states in the paper, “The name of the genus is chosen to honor the late Dr. Vicki Ann Funk (not Victoria), who was (and remains) a coauthor on the paper in spite of the present decision to name the genus for her”. Unfortunately, Robinson also passed away before the paper was finished, so to honor Robinson, the paper was completed in this present version by his co-authors.

Vicki Funk collecting plants on Volcano Tacna, Chile in 2014. (photo by Mauricio Diazgranados)

A look at the Guiana Shield plant collections of Redden and Wurdack

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 2023.

For more than 30 years, the Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield (BDG) studied, documented, and preserved the biological diversity of the Guiana Shield in northern South America, which comprises parts of French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Venezuela. The BDG program resulted in numerous publications, and a recently produced publication documents a decade of specimen collections by former and current Smithsonian botanists Karen Redden and Ken Wurdack. The open access publication written by Carol Kelloff, Karen Redden, Ken Wurdack, and Sara Alexander (Smithsonian Contribution to Botany, no. 116) is available for download at https://doi.org/10.5479/si.21912828.

On "Palm Mountain" in October 2008. Left to right: Claudius Perry, Nigel John, Pads Ragnauth, Karen Redden, Elvis Joseph, and Ken Wurdack. (self-timed photo)

In 2006, Vicki Funk asked Redden and Wurdack, who had met in the U.S. National Herbarium the previous year, if they would conduct a joint collecting expedition for the BDG. The BDG had maintained a full- or part-time resident collector in Guyana from 1986 until 2000, after which point it sponsored regular collecting expeditions to locations across the Guiana Shield. Redden and Wurdack’s first trip in 2006 was followed by 16 more (5 jointly plus additional expeditions by Redden with others), in a collaborative partnership that would last until the BDG’s final expedition in 2014.

Plant and lichen discovery in the southern Philippines

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 2023.

By Manuela Dal Forno and Jun Wen

On January 11, 2023, we started our journey to the Philippines, Manuela Dal Forno from Fort Worth Botanic Garden in Texas and Jun Wen from the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Little did we know then what adventures would wait for us in the Philippines. After traveling around 40 hours “door-to-door,” we arrived at our host institution, Central Mindanao University (CMU) in Maramag, Bukidnon Province on Mindanao Island.

Group photo during the first field day at Mt. Balatukan (Gingoog City, Barangay Kalagonoy, Mount Balatukan Range Natural Park) on January 18, 2023. (self-timed photo)

This journey, “Expedition 4,” was the fourth of a larger botanical project which started in 2018. For this most recent expedition, we worked in the Philippines for a total of 29 days and visited two main locations: Mt. Balatukan, part of the Mount Balatukan Range Natural Park in Misamis Oriental Province, in northern Mindanao; and Dinagat Islands, where we visited multiple municipalities, including Loreto, Basilisa, San Jose, Libjo and Tubajon. Toward the end of the trip, we collected in two additional localities, Mt. Musuan and Mt. Nebo, in the Valencia Valley of Bukidnon Province relatively close to our base at CMU. We were very fortunate to have the help of our Filipino colleagues who worked on the logistical details, such as meal planning, lodging, and securing permits ahead of time with the local communities and authorities. We especially thank Academician Dr. Victor Amoroso, Dr. Fulgent Coritico, Dr. Florfe Acma and Ms. Joie Lagumbay at CMU for their hard work on all the logistics for the expedition, and for the support from the local governments and communities.

Our trips were largely covered through two NSF-funded grants (DEB 1754697 and 1754667), namely, “Collaborative Research: Plant Discovery in the southern Philippines.” The main PI for this project is Peter Fritsch from the Fort Worth Botanic Garden (FWBG, more specifically BRIT, or Botanical Research Institute of Texas), with co-PIs Darin Penneys (University of North Carolina at Wilmington, WNC), Manuela Dal Forno (FWBG), and Dan Nickrent (Cornell University).

Specimen spotlight

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 4, October 2022.

The isotype of Chenopodium ucrainicum (Amaranthaceae) was recently processed by the U.S. National Herbarium and was received during the Covid-19 shutdown. Collected in Kyiv, Ukraine on October 2, 2019, the specimen was brought to the herbarium by Konstantyn Romashchenko, Research Associate in the Department of Botany.

The specimen was collected by Sergei Mosyakin, Director of the Kholodny Institute of Botany, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He collected it in the Tatarka historical neighborhood of Kyiv. Described in 2020 by Mosyakin and Bohumil Mándak (Prague, Czech Republic) (Ukrayins'k. Bot. Zhurn. 77: 237–248; https://doi.org/10.15407/ukrbotj77.04.237), it was initially reliably known from just several localities in Ukraine, but now dozens of new sites in central Ukraine are known, which means that it is probably more widespread in Eastern Europe. Its native versus alien status in Europe remains problematic. A late-flowering and late-fruiting species, the new taxon is well isolated from gene flow and hybridization with closely related species that flower earlier in the year.

Sergei Mosyakin with Chenopodium ucrainicum. (photo by Andrew Mosyakin)

Chenopodium ucrainicum is an overlooked B-genome diploid related to C. suecicum and C. ficifolium, meaning that it is a "basic" species that contributed to the recent speciation in the polyploid complex of C. album and its relatives, such as noxious weeds like hexaploid C. album (in a wide sense) and crops like tetraploid C. quinoa. The newly described species will help in understanding the evolution of the group and might prove to be useful for genetic improvement of quinoa crops because of its late development and resistance to cold.

Left: Chenopodium ucrainicum in the southern part of Kyiv Region. Right: Andrew Mosyakin with Chenopodium ucrainicum. (photos by Sergei Mosyakin)